DUBAI // Providing 88 schoolchildren with a nutritious, protein-enriched lunch each day for a year is the target of a Dubai-based charity.
The Feed the Future campaign aims to raise funds to feed children aged 5 to 13 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, by encouraging people to sponsor one child’s meal for a year at a cost of Dh349.
“These children come from extreme poverty,” said Maria Conceicao, the founder of the Maria Cristina Foundation, who in 2005 began to raise awareness and funds for education and the health care of slum children in Dhaka.
“We found that several kids were attending school completely exhausted and in many cases sick or seriously underweight from malnourishment. We discovered that many were just not getting regular meals. Often they just don’t have food at home for breakfast or when they get home in the evening.”
The meal will include rice, lentils, an egg and banana substituted with meat or potato. The lunch will be cooked in a kitchen at Dhaka’s Mahaad school.
Nourishment was key for these children to stay active and perform well in school, she said.
“If you can help us provide a daily meal to children, you will not only help keep them in school, but you will also help them to grow and thrive outside the classroom,” said Ms Conceicao.
The foundation has been paying education and medical costs for hundreds of slum children to enable them and their families to break out of poverty.
Through her work with the children and their families, Ms Conceicao realised that regular meals were also key to their growth.
“For the last nine years, we are trying to empower them to break out of poverty through education.”
The campaign aims to collect Dh30,712, enough to pay for the cost of a year’s school meals for 88 youngsters.
Ms Conceicao launched a programme two years ago to help Bangladeshi youths to pursue job training and careers in the hospitality and airline sector in the UAE.
The boys, aged 18 to 19, underwent month-long training programmes in UAE companies with the assurance of being selected as full-time employees if they passed the tests.
Other projects included bringing slum schoolchildren to study in Dubai and stay with host families.
“Feed the Future is literally planting the seeds for a better tomorrow,” she said, adding that the benefits would continue well beyond Ramadan.
“The greater good is you are not only giving to benefit one life, but rather you are changing the lives of so many just because you helped one child stay in school.”
Those interested in helping can obtain more information at the Maria Cristina Foundation Facebook page or by logging on to https://www.justgiving.com/yimby/foodforthought#/
rtalwar@thenational.ae
